In our capstone episode, Kate Linebaugh and Molly Ball break down Trump's first 100 days in office with WSJ’s Aaron Zitner, digging into the highs and lows, where things stand with voters and what’s next for the administration and the country. Further Listening: -Canada’s New Leader Is Ready to Take On Trump -Trump 2.0: Where is the Economy Headed -Taking Stock of the ‘Sell America’ Trade Sign up for WSJ’s free What’s News newsletter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Chapter 1: Who are the hosts and guest discussing Trump's first 100 days?
Hey, Molly.
Hey, Kate.
This is it. We've hit 100 days.
We made it. Yay! Where are the crowd sounds? Where is the cheering? Can we get like a sound effect? Fireworks? Something?
Thank you very much. Hello, Michigan. Hello. We love you, Michigan. We love you. We just had the biggest victory in Michigan.
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Chapter 2: How many executive orders and laws has Trump signed in his first 100 days?
Yeah. Well, it's been 100 days. Wow. Even more, actually, a couple more. It has been like 103 days. So to mark the occasion, I've come up with a small pop quiz for you, something to test you on a few key points from Trump's first 100 days. Oh, boy. Okay. Let's see how we do. How many executive orders has Trump signed in these first 100 days?
Ah, I actually looked this up recently. I believe it's about 140, which is a lot.
It is a lot. The exact number is 142. Okay, I was close.
It's a lot more than most presidents sign, and, you know, they've been pretty substantive. They've really driven a lot of policy. It's been his major way of running the government. How many bills has Trump signed into law? Well, this is quite a contrast. Very few. I believe the number is just five.
So Congress kind of spinning its wheels while Trump is, you know, putting his signature on all kinds of things. How much money has Trump cut from the federal budget? Ah, well, Doge, the Elon Musk Department of Government Efficiency, claims that they have cut about $160 billion.
But actually, because of the sort of chaotic way they've gone about the firings and cuts and so forth, they have actually increased the amount of federal spending. So the answer is a negative number.
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Chapter 3: What progress has been made on Trump's immigration and deportation policies?
And one thing that Trump was talking a lot about coming into office was mass deportations. How many people has Trump deported?
I believe the numbers on this are pretty low. It's less than 100,000, which is not putting them on pace to reach a million this year, which I think is one of their goals. And it's behind the pace of the Biden administration.
In the first 100 days, nearly 66,000 people were deported. That's the number. Okay, so now that we've passed 100 days, where do you think the Trump administration is taking the country?
It's such an interesting question because I think there's a really good chance that the next 100 days doesn't look very much like the first 100 days at all. I think we're at an inflection point where a lot of things are in flux and we don't really know what comes next.
From the Journal, this is Trump 2.0. I'm Kate Leinbaugh. And I'm Molly Ball. It's Friday, May 2nd. Coming up, a look back at Trump's first 100 days in office and a look ahead to what's next. So, Molly, this week, Trump's been talking about all the things he's achieved in these 100 days. And one place he did it was at that rally in Michigan, where he celebrated with his base.
This is the best, they say, 100-day start of any president in history. And everyone is saying it. We're just...
Well, you know, one interesting thing about a lot of Trump's comments recently has been how much he continues to blame his predecessor. You've got to think that if things were going really, really well, he wouldn't feel a need to do that, to say there are some things that people still don't like about what's happening. But come on, they're not my fault.
Like they did with Biden, that guy was so bad. He was so bad under Biden. And remember this, we were losing $5 billion a day on trade, and now we're making money.
So he did spend a lot of time talking about Joe Biden, and he spent a lot of time talking about immigration.
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Chapter 4: How has Trump utilized executive power and challenged other branches of government?
The Constitution gives Congress the power to impose tariffs. That resides with the lawmakers. But they've given some of that power away through some of these laws, and he's made full effect of that. He's gone after the media by suing the media and changing the way the press covers him. He's gone after other institutions that he considers liberal, Ivy League universities, big law firms.
So he's tried to disempower a number of the institutions around him while filling in all the gray areas that exist in the law that allow him to have more power flow from the Oval Office.
Well, and speaking of other branches of government, he's really challenged the judiciary, hasn't he?
Well, that's right. I mean, what power centers remain that could check him and put limits, put guardrails on? I only see really three out there. One is the judiciary, and you're starting to see a lot of adverse rulings to both what he's done through Doge and the federal cuts and his immigration policy and the deportations.
Another might be the investors in the markets, and he's shown some sensitivity to whether investors are going to stick with him or whether they're going to walk away from American equities and bonds. The third is the Republican Party itself because if in the end he chooses not to fully obey the courts, what happens then?
And I think at that point it takes Republicans saying to him, hey, you need to obey the courts. And so the Republicans are with him very solidly. But in the future, they could be one of the institutions in Washington that puts a check on the president.
Are we approaching this constitutional crisis that some people talk about?
Well, I think that obviously depends who you ask. Certainly, some Trump critics and scholars of authoritarianism point to things like these emergency declarations and say, look at other countries. This is how dictators act. They declare martial law, right? They say, because there's an emergency happening, I get to do whatever I want.
Obviously, I think the administration would take issue with that assessment. Aaron pointed to what a lot of people see as a red line, which is a defiance of a court ruling, particularly a Supreme Court ruling. And Trump has repeatedly said that this is not something he would do, that he respects the courts, that his administration is going to abide by the courts.
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Chapter 5: Is the Trump administration approaching a constitutional crisis?
So while Musk says that it's going to continue, we do see a dialing back of that effort, and particularly of Musk's role in it. So we see him pulling back a little bit in multiple areas, even if it is obviously still the case that he is still running a very confrontational administration on a lot of fronts.
You know, Molly, your observation about him retreating points to another big feature of this first 100 days. And that is everything Trump has done has put him in a position to be a decider on key things. When you put tariffs on the whole world, Now, all of a sudden, Trump is the decider. Everyone has to come to him. Hey, 70 countries have come and they're looking for deals.
All these different parts of the U.S. economy, the auto industry, individual companies are looking for waivers from these tariffs. He gets to be the decider. When he disempowers law firms and strips them of their security clearance, they now have to come and negotiate individual deals with Trump.
When he goes after the universities, they have to come to the president and negotiate individual deals with Trump. He's caused everyone around the world to react to him and then come to him. And he gets to be the decider on all these things. And we'll see over the long run, is that a good way to run the government?
After this quick break, we're going to hear what the American public thinks about how Trump has been running the government.
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Chapter 6: What are some examples of Trump retreating or walking back policy decisions?
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So now we want to talk about how Trump's policy priorities are landing with the American public. Erin, you run polls for The Wall Street Journal, so you've got your fingers on the pulse. How are voters feeling?
I would say he has put America on edge. You look at the last nine, nine polls conducted by media in recent days, he is underwater on job approval by double digits, meaning by 10 points or more, more people disapprove than approve of what they're seeing from the president. That said, there are a lot of signs in the numbers also that people are in wait-and-see mode. They're on edge.
People fear disruption from the tariffs. They fear higher prices. But when we ask, are you feeling the effects of inflation, meaningful numbers of people say, I don't feel it now, but I worry about feeling it in the future. When you ask, hey, President Trump has said, let's put up with a little bit of disruption now for a long-term restructuring of the economy that's going to bring this golden age.
A meaningful share of people say, OK, I'll give him some grace there. There's still a number of people willing to give the president latitude. And so while the numbers for him are bad, I think a lot of Americans are in wait-and-see mode.
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Chapter 7: How is Trump positioned as the 'decider' in key policy areas?
Chapter 8: What does the future hold for the Trump administration beyond the first 100 days?
It's such an interesting question because I think there's a really good chance that the next 100 days doesn't look very much like the first 100 days at all. I think we're at an inflection point where a lot of things are in flux and we don't really know what comes next.
From the Journal, this is Trump 2.0. I'm Kate Leinbaugh. And I'm Molly Ball. It's Friday, May 2nd. Coming up, a look back at Trump's first 100 days in office and a look ahead to what's next. So, Molly, this week, Trump's been talking about all the things he's achieved in these 100 days. And one place he did it was at that rally in Michigan, where he celebrated with his base.
This is the best, they say, 100-day start of any president in history. And everyone is saying it. We're just...
Well, you know, one interesting thing about a lot of Trump's comments recently has been how much he continues to blame his predecessor. You've got to think that if things were going really, really well, he wouldn't feel a need to do that, to say there are some things that people still don't like about what's happening. But come on, they're not my fault.
Like they did with Biden, that guy was so bad. He was so bad under Biden. And remember this, we were losing $5 billion a day on trade, and now we're making money.
So he did spend a lot of time talking about Joe Biden, and he spent a lot of time talking about immigration.
Democrats have vowed mass invasion and mass migration. We are delivering mass deportation, and it's happening very fast.
It's clear that, you know, this is what Trump and others see as sort of the centerpiece of his presidency. He believes it's his best issue in the eyes of American voters. And they really do think that it's a winning issue for them. You know, playing the videos of these people who've been deported to that prison in El Salvador and really –
doubling down on the message that the border has been closed. We see that some of Trump's highest ratings are on this issue of border crossings, which have decreased by an incredible amount. So it's always revealing sort of what he chooses to emphasize.
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